Icebergs and Podcasts?
Are you asking what is the connection between icebergs and podcasts? Well, everyone knows that we only see the top of an iceberg floating on the sea, the vast proportion remains hidden out of sight. Podcasts listed in podcast channels are sometimes like icebergs too, especially when RSS feeds are listed in podcast directories.
As podcasting becomes more popular and used to retrieve information (albeit in an audio or video format), the number of podcasts can become large and unmanageable. Some podcasts feeds are now starting to contain more than 300 episodes. So using techniques to search and locate podcasts also becomes an important skill for children and young people to use.
In a previous posting, we suggested that providing an informative podcast description for a podcast was important to convey some sense of the audio or video content. This is where search facilities can then come into their own for retrieving relevant podcasts.
You will find that different podcast directories work in different ways. Some will provide facilities to search:
In the podcast directory for educators, our approach is based on a single principle - to make the process as easy as possible for children and young people. Not every podcast is listed for a podcast channel because we decided to limit the number to between 15-20 podcasts. The feedback we had received suggested that teachers and learners find it more useful to include the descriptions rather than displaying a long list of podcast titles to scroll through first.
As a result, there are often more podcasts than those displayed on the screen. At the last count, the largest number of selected podcasts in just one channel in our directory was 89, meaning there is only 20 on display - hence the iceberg analogy! Now this is where search facilities can really come into their own.
If you have a group of children or young people undertaking research into a topic in a subject area, you can encourage them to search the podcast titles and descriptions within a subject area. Depending on the search criteria, this will usually locate a manageable number of podcasts to explore further in date order. You can watch a short demonstration of this process by selecting the "Searching for podcasts" option in our help pages section of the website.
Using our search facilities, the podcasts are listed in order with the newest first. You can also be confident that the content will be "family friendly" as all the podacsts are carefully selected for educational use. But like any search process this can sometimes produce surprising results - just like icebergs!
As podcasting becomes more popular and used to retrieve information (albeit in an audio or video format), the number of podcasts can become large and unmanageable. Some podcasts feeds are now starting to contain more than 300 episodes. So using techniques to search and locate podcasts also becomes an important skill for children and young people to use.
In a previous posting, we suggested that providing an informative podcast description for a podcast was important to convey some sense of the audio or video content. This is where search facilities can then come into their own for retrieving relevant podcasts.
You will find that different podcast directories work in different ways. Some will provide facilities to search:
- the podcast channel titles and/or descriptions;
- the podcast episodes (titles and descriptions);
- for keywords (incorporated in the podcast directory or RSS feed);
- across all subject categories or within some categories.
In the podcast directory for educators, our approach is based on a single principle - to make the process as easy as possible for children and young people. Not every podcast is listed for a podcast channel because we decided to limit the number to between 15-20 podcasts. The feedback we had received suggested that teachers and learners find it more useful to include the descriptions rather than displaying a long list of podcast titles to scroll through first.
As a result, there are often more podcasts than those displayed on the screen. At the last count, the largest number of selected podcasts in just one channel in our directory was 89, meaning there is only 20 on display - hence the iceberg analogy! Now this is where search facilities can really come into their own.
If you have a group of children or young people undertaking research into a topic in a subject area, you can encourage them to search the podcast titles and descriptions within a subject area. Depending on the search criteria, this will usually locate a manageable number of podcasts to explore further in date order. You can watch a short demonstration of this process by selecting the "Searching for podcasts" option in our help pages section of the website.
Using our search facilities, the podcasts are listed in order with the newest first. You can also be confident that the content will be "family friendly" as all the podacsts are carefully selected for educational use. But like any search process this can sometimes produce surprising results - just like icebergs!
posted by Dave Jobbings at 12:46 PM
<< Home